"Elmo!" Jake crowed the second he saw the portable DVD player set up in the back seat of the car. Plainly, he was ready for a driving trip, as long as we had Elmo's Big Outdoors at the ready.
As was I. After a year of living in the mountains, I was craving some beach time the way the work-at-home mommy me sometimes still craves a particularly stylin' and youthful outfit I spot on t.v. (because I don't go out anywhere that I might see stylish outfits on an actual person). I know I will live if I don't make it to the beach (or wear that outfit), but my soul cries out that I am slowly crushing it into a desiccated shell of its former self by not fulfilling this aching need. The former self that presumably lived on the beach and wore great clothes, though I can't recall any time in my life when I did either with any consistency.
But with the warm days waning, I grabbed my last chance for a lovely long weekend beach idyll with a trip to Hotwire and a score on a great deal at what was advertised as a four-star Marriott in Hilton Head.
That four-star rating was seriously called into question late Friday night when we arrived after a five-hour drive and I carried a pajama-clad, groggy Jake to our room only to find the door propped open.
I shrugged and entered anyhow, shivering a little at the deserted feel of a corner of the ninth floor at midnight.
Then I turned to shut the door and, hmm, it didn't close. Didn't even fit in the doorjamb, in fact. I am not sure how this can happen to a hotel room door without anyone noticing, but the nice thing about a hotel—or any other building you don't own, for that matter—is that you don't have to care. It's someone else's problem.
"Would you like us to send someone up to fix it?" the pleasant-enough clerk asked, when I finally made my way to the front of a rowdy line of hotel guests with other issues to take up at Reception.
"No," I said somewhat less pleasantly. "I would like you to give me a room with a door that closes and send someone to fix the other one when I'm not in it."
We ended up in a lovely room with a working door on the fifth floor. We didn't expect a beach view at Hotwire rates, so we were quite happy with our little balcony overlooking the parking lot. Even though the view that morning—all weekend, in fact—was of clouds and rain.
What had happened to my weekend of soaking up beach, beach, beach? The ghostly specter of the Me waiting to stretch out on the lounge chair with a lot of sunshine and a good book hovered in the background, howling with disappointment.
How to Spend a Rainy Weekend in Hilton Head with a 21-Month-Old
The whole reason I had decided to go to Hilton Head was my neighbor's reassurance that, while it might be a bit of a suburban, packaged hell, it was also incredibly easy and fun and did I mention easy when you are vacationing with a small toddler. Access to the beach. Indoor swimming pool. Outdoor restaurants with playgrounds right next door. Add in the sunshine and the smell of ocean air and I was hooked. (Plus, I'm not a very discerning customer when it comes to sleekly packaged beach vacations, since I can appreciate a little bit of tacky luxury along with the most clueless purveyors happy to overpay for a room where the refrigerator is replaced by the $10 bagels available in the hotel cafe, a lobby painted in beach-like peaches and blues, and a spa offering a 25-minute massage for $75.)
We did get to spend a little time on the beach Saturday morning. We just had to keep moving to stay warm.
I was reminded of our Long Beach days, when I would gather infant-Jake to me in my chocolate-brown sling to watch our hound girls frolic at the dog beach. I'd spin back and forth to shield Jake from the breeze and the wet, sandy paws of friendly canines, hovering over him like a bus shelter. Eventually, he'd fall asleep against me, his warm body pressed to my heart as all around me the joyfulness of dogs at play bounced off the breeze with the barks of throw stick!
Jake is, needless to say, way beyond the sling, though he still likes to cuddle against me on occasion. On Saturday, however, his preference was for a good, brisk game of kick-the-SpongeBob-SquarePants-ball-into-the-wind with his dad. Overcast beach mornings are also, apparently, prime time for laughing hysterically at the sight of dogs charging into the ocean in pursuit of bits of driftwood.
After some initial distress, Jake even discovered the joys of being covered in salt water and mud. And I discovered the joy—every bit as strong as that of cradling an infant child to your chest as he sleeps in his sling—of watching my son and my husband running down the beach together in stitches of laughter.
For those of you who are wondering where the pictures of this childhood joy are posted, we neglected to bring the camera on our beach outing, thus proving what neglectful parents we are and raising the distinct possibility that Jake's impending sibling will remain forever undocumented in the annals of our family photo albums.
From the beach, it was on to the indoor pool. Thank heaven for the indoor pool, housed in a terrarium-like structure that made you feel not quite so guilty about spending your beach vacation huddled inside a steamy, warm indoor cocoon. The water was a lovely tepid temperature and the depth of the pool quite shallow. It was, in effect, a giant bathtub in which a Reynauds-afflicted parent like myself could spend as much time as her son. Which is quite a lot of time when it is—as I may have mentioned—raining.
We did our best to deal with the rain, running between cloudbursts to little tourist villages and restaurants in which Jake could work off some of the energy he didn't get to expend on the beach. But by Sunday afternoon we were reduced to taking him to the play area at the indoor mall. Which he thought was just great, but I found more than a little bit dispiriting.
Then it was Monday morning, almost time to leave. As Mike and I lay awake listening to Jake's beautiful toddler-sleep breath, Mike suggested I go for a walk. We were due to depart within the next couple of hours and, he pointed out, I was the one who had wanted—needed—to go the beach.
These are the moments when I know exactly what a good partner is and how very lucky I am to have him.
As I stepped out the doors into the palm tree-lined pathways of the Crowne Plaza (when you depend on Hotwire for cheap accommodations, you must be prepared to switch hotels in the middle of your mini-vacation), I felt the ocean setting rush at me with an oomph of need. The soft swish of the palm fronds shifting in the breeze. The sandy-salty sweetness of the air. And the sound—oh, the sound—of waves shushing to shore just over a rise past the pool.
An about-to-cry feeling shot quickly to the top of my throat and behind my cheekbones. It might be time, I felt, for a good round of sorrowfulness that I had been robbed of the beach time my soul so desperately needed.
Being Carried by Motion (or How to Stop Swimming Upstream)
As I headed onto the beach, the beauty of the white-capped waves, the hushed feel of walking amongst other people while separated by wind and water, the cool feel of damp sand rolling across the tops of my flip flops flipped me into some familiar patterns.
An overcast beach is where I have done some of my most melancholy reflection. There is the seawall off the condominium complex where my family used to stay in Hawaii when I was a teenager, the spot to which I'd retreat every time the arguments of a family crammed into too much togetherness exploded into my youngest-and-therefore-to-blame tears of my-life-is-worthless despair. The stretch by the Hamptons cabin to which my law-school-era boyfriend, Sam, and I occasionally retreated, where I would try to walk off the heaviness of my chosen profession and the sense that if I married Sam I'd be headed for more of the same of what my life had been so far. And the mingling of tankers off the coast and cyclists on the bike path on the beach by my last home, in Long Beach, where Mike and I would sometimes trudge on gray days as if to shake off whatever still wasn't quite right with our lives.
The temptation to think in the same grooves of what-I'm-missing and where-have-I-gone-wrong grabbed at me on that Hilton Head beach yesterday. The setting was right—gray sky and grayer water, enticing yet frightening white caps, strangers smiling kindly as their hair blew straight back, revealing a stark, tight truth that no one's life is perfect.
But stronger than that pull was the sound of the waves. That rhythmic shushhh, shushh, the light, laughing plops of droplets jumping up before gathering back in a tumble of white water and seaweed.
That sound filled up the empty space in me that had been clamoring for some beach time. It made me want to write about my walk, and about all that was right in my life: My son breathing those safe, warm breaths in his Pack n' Play pressed right up to my side of the bed so I could reach out for him if he cried out at night in a strange hotel room. My husband who had given up his own walk on the beach for mine, and who had agreed to come to a place so opposite to his own ideal of a vacation because I had repeatedly pleaded for one last run to the beach while we could. My home in the mountains, which, though they may not feed my soul the way the ocean does, are a gaspingly beautiful tableau of brilliant orange maple leaves and stunning blue skies right now. And my life, which has found a place where I can hear the shushhh, shushh rhythm of a life well lived.
When we talk about surrender in yoga, we don't mean giving up. We don't mean putting yourself under someone or something else's command. What we mean is surrendering the struggle. The struggle to mold things in a way you think you need. The struggle to change, or to remain the same. The struggle that drowns out the soothing sound of the ocean that will go on whether or not you listen or acknowledge it.
When we surrender, we surrender to that movement of the ocean, and of the Universe around us. You know you can't change the way the waves move, so when you swim in the ocean, you surrender to them, you move with them, you let them carry you. It doesn't mean you're not swimming. It doesn't mean you don't get a say in what you're moving toward or away from. It just means that you give in to and move with that more powerful force that surrounds you.
Life is the same way. It's obviously harder to appreciate and remember the force surrounding you when you're in the middle of life. But when you forget about or ignore it, you may find yourself swimming against the tide, tiring yourself out trying to get to something that might just be too far away for you to reach it.
Yoga, largely, is about reminding ourselves of the bigger forces, finding a way to perceive them, to move with instead of against them. We choose ever-more-challenging asanas to teach ourselves how not to struggle, even when we encounter something difficult. Instead, we learn to draw on the energy around us to help in the pose, and we surrender to our limitations.
That walk on the beach was, for me, an even more powerful reminder than my asana practice. Yes, it assured me, the ocean does call to me, powerfully. But that doesn't mean I have to live on the beach, or put myself in a funk when I acknowledge that I will never, ever, have a cozy home with a big plate-glass window looking out on the ocean.
Instead, it means I will come to see the beach—once, twice a year, maybe more or maybe less—so I can hear and feel that peace and calm and sense of wisdom in the air. So I can feel small and yet part of something bigger. So I can appreciate my family, my partnership, my life, and my mountain home.
Ujjayi Breath—The Sound of the Ocean
It's no coincidence, I'm convinced, that ujjayi breath sounds like the ocean. There's a reason it's so calming, so soothing, why it relaxes you into the rhythm of a good asana practice.
And yet, once you get used to it, it's pretty easy to stop listening. Which is a good suggestion to me that even if I did ever get that perfect little home on the beach I'd probably stop noticing that sometimes too.
On the days when I find a way to focus my entire practice on my breath, I rediscover what is really so spiritual and life-giving about my asana practice. And so I invite you today to commit your next yoga practice to really hearing your ujjayi breath, letting it be the most important part of your practice.
Or, if you're not planning on or don't have a regular asana practice, just try it throughout the day. A little ujjayi breath. Or, of you're well familiar and comfortable with ujjayi, some four-part breathing.
On your mat or off, see what it does to your vision of and appreciation for your life.
No comments:
Post a Comment